I started to like Byron in this episode--before, I didn't know quite what to think of him.
Lochley's little "revelation" was startling and quite amusing.
It beggars belief that no-one would know about Lochleys revolation. did she and Sheridan not have any friends, was it really such a secret event. This is precisely the type of gossip the media would try and delve up about the history of the new alliance president, and his associates.
Talking of his chiefs of staff. Sheridan promotes his (Spoiler here)
ex wife as commander of B5, his best friend as chief of intellegence, the B5 ambassidors to the advisory council and his new wife becomes the next president. Is there no such word as nepotism in the B5 universe.
Ruminations:
- Does anyone else think that the length of hair of Byron's people is disproportionately long? The wavy beautiful look... or that's how it comes across. Now maybe one could make the argument that being broke and on the run doesn't allow them to get it cut, but their hair does look like it's been getting washed regularly and in the case of byron, conditioned and a few other things to give it that fashion magazine look.
Here's one that I thought of regarding Byron's people. Why did nobody suggest the telephaths asking the Minbari for asylum? It's been established that ambassadorial quarters are considered "foreign soil," meaning that Bester's bloodhound units couldn't enter them. Delenn is sympathetic to their cause & Minbari hold telepaths in high regard. In Legacies they allowed a human latent-telepath (Alisa Beldon) to travel their world, rather than go with the Psi-Corps.
Sheridan's problem is that the Alliance Constitution grants each world the right to govern their own people as they see fit & Earth sees fit to give the Psi-Corps jurisdiction over telepaths. But it also grants sovereignty to the member worlds. Surely the ability to grant asylum to political dissidents still exists. The only reason that G'Kar didn't get turned over to the Centauri after the fall of Narn was because Sheridan granted him asylum with Earth. Even in our world Canada once granted asylum to American citizens who wanted to escape the draft in Vietnam War era America & none of that jeopardized our relationship with Canada.
Of course we don't know how big the Minbari ambassadorial wing is; or how comfortably they could accommodate 150 refugees. But that seems like a small problem to me. Delenn's quarters seem rather large, heck even the "small quarters" that Lyta got stuck in during an earlier episode seemed to have some decent square footage. Just clear some space and roll in a bunch of triple-decker bunk beds & sleeping bags. B5 once found space to house 25,000 GROPOS on 5 minutes notice. Heck, Delenn & Sheridan had been alternating quarters since they got married. Surely Delenn would have been willing to donate her quarters to the cause, fill it with bunks for the refugees and just move into Sheridan's quarters.
It's been a while since I've watched Season Five. But I've had the impression that Byron, in the long run, doesn't want to be beholden to any power, no matter how benevolent.